What’s Most Important in Your Community?

On Mother’s Day in Guatemala, 70 women from a village bordering a dumpsite on the outskirts of Guatemala City gathered to work with our team on the answer to that question.

Figuring out a list of needs was the easy part. They need:

• A school
• A recreation center
• Access to clean water
• A health clinic
• Better housing

Next came the hard part.  Our team leader took them through an exercise in which they had to choose which of these was the most important to them.  It was almost like filling out a bracket for March Madness, but with an entire room of people advocating for what they felt was more important to their community: housing or water?  Water or a school? A school or a health clinic?

Take a good look at that list and see if you can guess what is most important to them.  I was surprised by their answer.

It’s a health clinic.  More important than water, housing, or a school, to 70 moms who spent their Mother’s Day working on this together.  That, to me, seems like something that should get done, and because of people like you who give so generously to our mission, we are going to help them get that health center built.

But we could use your help in a different way.

We are having trouble finding enough doctors, dentists and nurses to go to this village for a week to provide desperately needed medical care.  We want to send a small team to their community for a week of service, in coordination with medical professionals from the local community, and we need enough volunteers to do this three times over the next year to provide an adequate continuity of care.

Please email me if you are interested in providing medical care to those who desperately need it, or click here for more information.

We’re so excited that we have the means, and those around us with willing hearts, to provide for these people. Stay posted with us to see where this journey takes us – and how things are for this community next Mother’s Day.

Sincerely,

Mike

 

P.S.  I will be in Columbus, Ohio on June 20 and Toledo on June 27 to have dinner with those who are interested in learning more, and we’ll be hosting dinners after that in Detroit and Ann Arbor.  Please let me know if you’d like to join me at one of these.